Summer 1998: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Summer is the payoff, the season every other one points toward, and in the valley it runs full and green and fast.
Water is the constant concern. The features run on a closed loop, recirculating the same water, and the planting is grouped so the irrigation only runs where it is needed. In a dry climate, a beautiful garden and a frugal one are usually the same garden.
The perennial beds peak in July, and steady deadheading pushes a second flush of color into the cooler nights of late August. The native grasses come into their own as the season ages.
The afternoon monsoon storms arrive most days from mid July, brief and loud, and a smart garden leans on them, pulling back the irrigation after a real soaking instead of running the timer.
On the practical side this season, a note from the field. For low shrubs that flower for months and shrug off heat, we come back to potentilla and blue mist spirea again and again. Potentilla blooms yellow or white from June to frost, takes full sun, and survives almost anything, including neglect. Blue mist spirea hums with bees in late summer when little else is going, and you cut it back hard each spring to keep it tidy.
Water early in the morning, before the midday sun and wind carry half of it off, and let the monsoon do the rest when it shows up.
Everything in this valley runs on the same short calendar, and the gardens that thrive are the ones designed around it rather than against it.
Our soil is mostly alkaline clay, the air is thin and dry, and the sun is strong, so the plants that last are the ones that have made peace with all three.
We take on only a handful of gardens each year, which is the only way to give a place like this the attention it asks for.
More than anything, a garden up here rewards patience: it takes a season or two longer to settle than people expect, then looks like it was always there.
We design, build, and maintain our own gardens, so we live with the results for years and learn from them.
The land around us is the best teacher there is, and the gardens we like best borrow from the hillsides more than from any catalog.
That is the season from where we stand. We will check back when the next one turns.